About five years ago I began experimenting with the hot wax medium Encaustic. Encaustic gives my photographs the texture and depth I have long admired in paintings. In addition, I can manipulate the surface with traditional and non-traditional objects, like brushes, hammers, dental tools etc. I can also scrape out areas revealing more of the photograph underneath.
 
The process:
            A mixture of beeswax and damar resin is heated to about 200 degrees and applied to a surface. In my case, the surface is one of my photographs printed on watercolor paper and mounted on board. After each layer of wax cools, it is “fixed” by reheating the wax with a heat gun. Additional layers are added in a similar fashion. I use three or four layers before making textural patterns in the wax surface, carving out elements, or adding pastel pigments. 

      A voice from the transgender community is rare. The fear of persecution keeps most transgender people from sharing their experience.  I have been fortunate,  for five years, I had the opportunity to photographically document a friend as she explored her new identity as a woman. I have self published my documentation in a book titled: Transforming  Identity: Sex Change at Sixty-Six. The book, also, includes an interview in which she talks about her experience. What makes this story unique is the fact that Bob became Arabella Sofia Bianco (Belle) at age sixty-six.